Paleontology News

This is an artist's impression of the Upland Moa, Megalapteryx didinus, by George Edward Lodge, 1907.

Extinct Moa’s Refugia Continue to Serve as Sanctuaries for New Zealand’s Remaining Flightless Birds

Jul 25, 2024 by News Staff

Human settlement of islands across the Pacific Ocean was followed by waves of faunal extinctions that occurred so rapidly that their dynamics are difficult...

An artist’s rendition of an early human habitat in Tanzania 1.8 million years ago. Image credit: M. Lopez-Herrera / Enrique Baquedano / Olduvai Paleoanthropology and Paleoecology Project.

New Research Sheds Light on Processes that Shaped Hominin Evolution in Eastern Africa

Jul 23, 2024 by News Staff

Eastern Africa preserves the most complete record of human evolution anywhere in the world but scientists have little knowledge of how long-term biogeographic...

Hibernophis breithaupti lived 38 million years ago in what is now western Wyoming. Image credit: Jasmine Croghan.

38-Million-Year-Old Fossil Rewrites Snake Evolution

Jul 23, 2024 by News Staff

Paleontologists have described a new species of snake from the Early Oligocene of Wyoming based on four nearly complete and articulated specimens found...

Life reconstruction of Electroscincus zedi; areas of the lizard not represented in the material available are depicted as blurred. Image credit: Stephanie Abramowicz.

99-Million-Year-Old Burmese Amber Reveals Oldest Known Skink

Jul 22, 2024 by Natali Anderson

Paleontologists have found the remains of a previously unknown species of lizard in a piece of mid-Cretaceous amber excavated in northern Myanmar. Life...

Life reconstruction of Harenadraco prima. Image credit: Yusik Choi.

New Bird-Like Dinosaur Unearthed in Mongolia

Jul 17, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Harenadraco prima is the first species of troodontid dinosaur ever found in the Late Cretaceous Baruungoyot Formation of Mongolia. Life reconstruction...

Paleo-Indians hunting a glyptodont, a relative of the armadillo that lived during the Pleistocene epoch. By Heinrich Harder, 1920.

Archaeologists Find Stone Tool Marks on 21,000-Year-Old Glyptodont Bones in Argentina

Jul 17, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Archaeologists in Argentina have analyzed the 21,000-year-old fossil remains with cut marks belonging to a specimen of the exinct glyptodont Neosclerocalyptus,...

Skull of Asiatosuchus oenotriensis, holotype, from the Middle Eocene site of Casaseca de Campeán, Spain. Image credit: Narváez et al., doi: 10.1002/ar.25422.

Paleontologists Discover New Species of Ancient Crocodile

Jul 15, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new species of early crocodyloid crocodilian being named Asiatosuchus oenotriensis has been discovered by a team of paleontologists from the Universidad...

Benggwigwishingasuchus eremicarminis on the Panthalassan Ocean coast. Image credit: Jorge Gonzalez.

Pseudosuchian Archosaurs Inhabited Coast of Panthalassan Ocean

Jul 15, 2024 by News Staff

Paleontologists in the United States have described a new genus and species of extinct crocodile relative based on a partially articulated skeleton found...

Life reconstruction of ancient giraffids. Image credit: Apokryltaros / CC BY 3.0.

Miocene Giraffid Species Had Two Pairs of Ossicones

Jul 12, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists in Pakistan have unveiled a new genus and species of prehistoric giraffe relative from the Miocene epoch. Life reconstruction of ancient...

Probabilistic estimates of metabolic networks from modern life that were present in LUCA. Image credit: Moody et al., doi: 10.1038/s41559-024-02461-1.

Last Universal Common Ancestor Lived 4.2 Billion Years Ago: Study

Jul 12, 2024 by News Staff

The last universal common ancestor (LUCA) is the hypothesized common ancestor from which all modern cellular life, from single celled organisms like bacteria...

Sandoval-Velasco et al. assembled the genome and 3D chromosomal structures of a 52,000-year-old woolly mammoth. Image credit: Sandoval-Velasco et al., doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.06.002.

52,000-Year-Old Woolly Mammoth Skin Retained Its Ancient Genome Architecture: Study

Jul 11, 2024 by News Staff

Scientists from Baylor College of Medicine and elsewhere say they have discovered subfossils of ancient chromosomes in the remains of a female woolly mammoth...

Life reconstruction of Comptonatus chasei. Image credit: John Sibbick.

New Iguanodontian Dinosaur Unearthed on Isle of Wight

Jul 10, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new genus and species of iguanodontian dinosaur being named Comptonatus chasei has been described by University of Portsmouth Ph.D. student Jeremy Lockwood...

Fona herzogae. Image credit: Jorge Gonzalez.

Newly-Discovered Thescelosaurine Dinosaur Lived in Burrows

Jul 9, 2024 by News Staff

Thescelosaurines were a group of small to medium-sized, plant-eating dinosaurs that inhabited North America during the Late Cretaceous epoch. The newly-discovered...

Paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the Late Jurassic Phu Kradung Formation of northeastern Thailand. Image credit: Chatcharin Somboon.

T. rex’s Distant Relative Lived in Thailand 145 Million Years Ago

Jul 8, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Three fossilized teeth from a previously unknown species of non-tyrannosaurid tyrannosauroid dinosaur have been unearthed in northeastern Thailand by a...

Gaiasia jennyae. Image credit: Gabriel Lio.

Giant Salamander-Like Predator Lived in Namibia 280 Million Years Ago

Jul 5, 2024 by News Staff

At over 2.5 m (8.2 feet) in length, the newly-described stem tetrapod Gaiasia jennyae was possibly the largest creature of its kind. Life reconstruction...

Life reconstuction of Gigantspinosaurus (bottom foreground), a sister species of the newly-discovered stegosaur Baiyinosaurus baojiensis, and and other dinosaurs from the Shaximiao Formation. Image credit: A. Belov / CC BY-SA 3.0.

New Species of Stegosaur Revealed

Jul 3, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists in China have found the fossil fragments from a new genus and species of stegosaurian dinosaur: Baiyinosaurus baojiensis. Life reconstuction...

Svenning et al. show that there is little support for any major influence of climate, neither in global extinction patterns nor in fine-scale spatiotemporal and mechanistic evidence; conversely, there is strong and increasing support for human pressures as the key driver of these extinctions, with emerging evidence for an initial onset linked to pre-Homo sapiens hominins prior to the Late Pleistocene. Image credit: Svenning et al., doi: 10.1017/ext.2024.4.

Humans Played Key Role in Megafauna Extinctions, New Research Confirms

Jul 2, 2024 by News Staff

Across the last 50,000 years land vertebrate faunas have experienced severe losses of large species (megafauna), with most extinctions occurring in the...

Lithouva susmanii from the Paleocene of Colombia. Scale bar- 1 mm. Image credit: Herrera et al., doi: 10.1038/s41477-024-01717-9.

60-Million-Year-Old Grape Seeds Found in Colombia

Jul 2, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleobotanists have described nine new species of the grape family Vitaceae on the basis of 60- to 19-million-year-old fossil seeds discovered in four...

An artist’s impression of a ‘Snowball Earth.’ Image credit: NASA.

Snowball Earth’s Environmental Conditions Gave Multicellular Organisms Evolutionary Advantage

Jul 1, 2024 by News Staff

Fossil and molecular evidence suggests that complex multicellular organisms originated and proliferated during the Neoproterozoic Era (1,000-541 million...